I had some pals round to the flat after the pub closed. Coats were unceremoniously flung on the bed and drinks were ceremoniously poured into paper cups.

I think maybe someone needed a phone charger, or maybe I wanted to check my lipstick. Either way, I ended up in my room alone, listening to the laughter and the shuffling of socks on tiles coming from the other side of the wall.

I turn 30 this week and mostly I’m okay with it (really!!) but I swear in that moment I wanted nothing more than to climb under the pile of coats on the bed and stay there forever. Maybe I could make Time forget I existed for a bit. I would recognise the familiar smell of the perfume a friend had worn since she was 16 and dig further down past sleeves and hoods and find that same smell on her boyfriend’s collar. I would find train tickets and house keys and shopping lists in pockets. My hair would get caught in zips and my fingers would get trapped in buttonholes but if I buried myself deep enough nobody would ever be able to find me.

And maybe under the weight of all that wool and polyester and leather I would come to a realisation. That if my life’s worth amounted solely to the people who inhabit these coats, then I will have been one of the lucky ones. So when I am old and grey and it’s finally time for me to meet my maker, don’t put me in a coffin with a bunch of white lilies in my hands. Don’t burn my body and scatter my ashes in my favourite place. Bury me under a pile of my friends’ coats.

Chloé Magee is a multidisciplinary artist from Glasgow, Scotland, working across photography and writing. Her work is shaped by an enduring fascination with memory, longing, and the subtle ways people inhabit the world around them. Through images and prose, she gathers fragments of everyday life - fleeting gestures, familiar landscapes, and chance encounters - and reassembles them into reflections on belonging, community, and the passage of time. She is interested in what remains: the stories carried by places, the echoes of those who have left, and the quiet beauty found in ordinary moments. Moving between documentation and fiction, her practice seeks tenderness, intimacy, and meaning within the overlooked corners of contemporary life.

Visual Art
Peter Olude is an experimental artist and poet from Nigeria. His work has appeared in various magazines and journals, including The Prose Poem Magazine, Shallow Tales Review, Blanket Gravity, Last Girls Club (as the cover artist for Issue 18), Lighthouse Magazine | Black Girls Project, Paper Lanterns (Issues 11 & 14), Prism Magazine (Issue 62.1), and Temporal Lobe. He won 3rd place in the EndSARS National Poetry Contest (October 2020) and 2nd place in the Coffee Table Art Book Prize (February 2024), alongside Karen Eland. In his free time, he enjoys freehand sketching and permuting Rubik’s cubes.

Audio
Maggie Schwartz lives in Jackson, Wyoming, where she enjoys reading, making art, and exploring the mountains she has called home all her life. She is especially grateful for the ways stories help us carry grief, cultivate wonder, and feel a little less alone.

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